Investing & Retiring

Retiring without the worry of running out of money is a major goal for many of us. But what is the best way to ensure that you never run out of money in retirement?
It used to be that many retirees lived off of a pension, interest income, Social Security, or all three. This made

You Can’t Decide Without Facts When should you claim your Social Security benefits? Should you claim them on your own work record or on your spouse’s work record? Those relatively simple questions can become very complex in certain cases.
Fortunately, there are Social Security Administration (SSA) offices throughout the nation with staff waiting to help.

With a defined benefit plan, like a pension, retirees collect a fixed amount in every year of retirement. However, more and more Americans are retiring with defined contribution plans, in which they build assets up mainly through their own input. Under these plans, which are growing in popularity among employers, a retiree can easily deplete

For eight years in my 20’s, I was working 80-90 hours a week, fixated on chasing the all-powerful dollar. I barely saw my wife and first-born child, and I was miserable. I made a lot of money, but had no balance. At 30, when we found out my wife was pregnant with our second child,

War is coming. This one will not be a traditional type of war. This conflict will be fought inside the borders of the United States, between foes of different birth-years armed with little more than outrage and hyperbole. The point of this war isn’t land or power. The purpose of this battle is to affix

Excessive Borrowing – Bad for Countries As Well As People? If you continue to run a balance on your credit card every month, eventually your overspending will catch up with you. Collective interest charges will send you into a debt spiral – where you can’t even pay off the accrued interest, much less the debt

You’ve been presented with a free trial offer for a product or service that you find interesting. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warns you to proceed with caution, because some free trial offers can be misleading and cost you significant money in the long run.
Legitimate free trials

How much money will you need to retire? Financial advisors have frequently recommended a $1 million nest egg for a comfortable retirement, but there’s no one-size-fits-all magic number. Have you ever figured out how much money you’ll need? According to our new survey, you haven’t.
How much money will you get when you start collecting

By Mark Fidelman
If cryptocurrency history is written by the winners, then this is the year for Monero (XMR), the anonymous crypto coin, to add its name to the ledger. As of this week, Monero has a market cap of $4.5 billion, trading at $287 and is the 13th largest cryptocurrency in the world.
Released

No matter if you’re starting your career or approaching its end, you should be thinking about retirement. How am I getting ready? How much should I save? How should I invest? Am I being too aggressive, or too passive?
But perhaps a bigger question is, “Am I thinking about retirement at all?” In an exclusive

By Kelly Hartog “…I think it says a lot about the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn’t released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B (billion) market cap.” That was written by Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of Dogecoin, a parody cryptocurrency — named for

In today’s gig economy, very few workers enjoy pensions or defined-benefit plans. When it comes to saving for retirement, many Americans are forced to fend for themselves. Enjoying our ever-lengthening lifespans means that we need even more money to sustain us during our golden years.
“We are living longer, and we all know it,” says

Super Bowl LII (52 to you non-Romans) will take place at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday, February 4. We could have had the Jacksonville Jaguars in their first Super Bowl appearance facing the Minnesota Vikings as the first team to ever play a Super Bowl in their home stadium – but neither team

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will bring significant changes to individual taxpayers, but states will also be affected by some of the law’s provisions. The limitation on deductions for state and local taxes has grabbed the most headlines, because by definition, it affects taxpayers in states with high property values and high taxes

A Million Ways to Retire, 292 Ways to Plan for It America’s strategies for retirement run the gamut, from meticulously planned to none at all. Hopefully, your plan is more detailed than lottery tickets and blind luck – but what’s the best strategy for you? Is there even such a thing as a preferred retirement

As can be seen from yesterday’s example, an individual desiring $4,000 of monthly net income in retirement can need in excess of a $1,000,000 retirement portfolio to supplement his or her Social Security and pension income. As can be verified by this calculation, there are many factors to determining the retirement “nest egg” that must

I find when meeting with individuals for the first time that they typically have no idea how much they will need to be able to retire. The typical answer of $1 million is absolutely worthless since everyone has different income requirements and different income sources that must be added into the equation when determining when

Millennial Retirement Idealism How will millennials do in retirement? Very well…or so they think. A recent survey by Aperion Care on millennials and aging found that many millennials have fairly ambitious – and, in some cases, unrealistic – expectations regarding their golden years.
Millennials expect to live to age 81 on average – which is

What sort of structure makes the most sense for your small business – a corporate structure or a sole proprietorship? If neither structure fits you well, perhaps the best choice for you is a Limited Liability Company (LLC) – a structure that represents a middle ground between a regulated corporate structure and a simplified sole

Social Security is a critical component of the retirement plans of many Americans, making it critical to keep up with annual changes in the program. None of the changes for 2018 are as substantial as the recent tax code overhaul, but it still pays to review the changes at the beginning of the year to

More Savings, More Debt Do you participate in a 401(k) plan at work? If so, were you automatically signed-up by your employer? A new study suggests that if you were auto-enrolled in the plan, you may be accumulating more debt – but that may not necessarily be a problem.
Whatever… Just Sign Me Up Policymakers

Do you consider yourself a financial risk-taker? If so, what is the standard that you use to analyze risk? If you don’t fully understand risk, you may be looking at the wrong criteria to make the best financial decisions for you and your family.
A recent survey by AMG Funds suggests that very few investors

Nearly 4 million people turn 65 every year here in America and many of them are looking forward to retiring soon. There’s a lot of financial planning that goes into retirement, such as when to apply for Social Security benefits and when to begin distributions from retirement accounts.
It’s also important to plan for your

Is this unusually cold winter putting a hurt on your heating bill? The bomb cyclone could be blowing a hole in your heating budget, for the colder it gets, the more costly it is to heat your home. The good news is that you can lessen the financial impact of cold weather by making a

Tax Season Arrives In January Are you ready for tax season? Ready or not, tax season, defined as the first day that the IRS accepts tax forms to the tax filing deadline, will be here soon.
For the 2018 filing season (covering the 2017 tax year), tax season begins on Monday, January 19 and ends

In the discussion of Social Security, little is more unproductive and contentious than the assertion that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It marks the point where the discussion stops and the fight begins.
Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? That entirely depends upon your meaning of the phrase.
If you use the term loosely

You may manage your money well, but do you also manage the bank that holds it for you? If not, you may be missing out on useful services and products, or paying more than necessary to receive them. Consider these tips that can help you to use your bank more wisely.
1. Shop Around –

Cash flow sounds like a relatively simple concept, and in some ways it is, but poor cash flow management can take down a small business. Cash flow is equally critical for households. If you miss a paycheck when bills come due and you have no reserve funds available, you will incur losses in terms of

What are your personal goals for 2018? How will your financial planning support you in achieving them? While you have your New Year’s cap on, take this chance to make the personal financial resolutions that will get you closer to the life you want.
Define your Objectives – The SMART model is an effective guide

Did you get what you wanted for Christmas? We hope so, but you probably have at least one gift that you cannot use or do not want.
You can usually return unwanted gifts, but what can you do with a gift card that you will never use? We have a few suggestions for your consideration.